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She said: “As a five foot high, innocent-looking mother coming out with some of the stuff I do, is a bit of a shock. I think it’s a bit like therapy; it all just comes out. I don’t really have a filter; I’m quite happy to be blunt and honest. I just think that it comes out more in comedy.

“Obviously I can switch that off when I’m at home or in work.”

Her style is one of the things that impressed the WUSA judges and has put her in sight of the £1,000 first prize and access to the professional comedy circuit.

She said: “One piece of feedback that I had from the first heat was that I was like an innocent-looking Jo Brand; people look at me and think that I’m going to be all innocent and lovely but then I just come out and I’m disgusting. With Jo Brand you expect that.”

She caught the comedy bug whilst studying for her degree thanks to one of her lecturers.

“Comedy came with my lecturer Dave Ainsworth, who is a stand up comic himself. He’s a lovely man and a big role model for me. He was putting on a stand up comedy night for charity in the university’s student union; I had just seen Sarah Millican and thought I would love to give it a go and he said, ‘Yeah, go for it’.

“I then spent from November until March, last year, writing a set, got up on the stage and went down really well. I loved it and haven’t been able to stop since.”

Coral doesn't think there are enough female comedians

To most of us getting up on stage and opening up like that would be seen as a huge risk but the Lancashire-born comedian, who grew up in Cornwall, is not adverse to taking a leap in the dark.

“When I was 18 I got bored with Cornwall, zoomed in on a map, pointed out a spot, it said Wales, zoomed in again and it said Carmarthen, and I moved there a week later, all on my own.

“I was completely different. I was really shy and I hated strangers. I had never been on stage; nothing. I was completely different to how I am now.”

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The experience has obviously toughened up the mother of a 4-year-old boy and allowed her to deal with difficult audiences.

“I remember getting heckled for the first time. It was a gig in Cardiff and there was a group of drunk men in the front row. To be honest, I turned around and told the promoter that I didn’t want to go on but he calmed me down a bit.

“I thought, ‘Right, I need to think of some comebacks.’ I had nothing.

“Then I went up there and stuff just came out along with my set to the point where one of them left because he was so offended by my comebacks. He was heckling me and I was heckling him back. He got in touch with me on Facebook later that evening to say he had gone home to sit with his cat called Baby!

“It was one of the best gigs I think I have ever had; putting an ex-army man in his place. I loved it. It’s too rude to repeat what I said here!”

Coral decided to go on stage after seeing Sarah Millican perform live

While not overtly feminist Halliwell is more than happy to been seen as a role model for other females.

“There’s still not enough of us. If there is more than one female on a bill it’s a big thing. It’s very male orientated still but I quite like that. It makes it a bit more exciting if you are the female. It’s still that, ‘Oh she’s a woman; is she going to be any good? It’s nice sometimes just to be able to wow people.”

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Hopefully she will be able to wow the judges on Thursday more than the other five finalists - Tanya Spence-Kelly, Col Howarth, Drew Taylor, Morgan Rees and Josh Elton - but either way she is happy with the way things are progressing.

“I already see myself as a winner. To be in the final, after only just over a year, in the biggest competition in comedy in Wales I’m over the moon.”

And as for the future, she hopes to shock a lot more people saying: “I would absolutely love to make this my full time career. Watching comedians on stage, with big crowds of people, doing that for a living... I would love to.”